A CLOSER LOOK AT CLIMATE CHANGE (PART 9)

CLIMATE CHANGE JIHAD

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth”



Albert Einstein – 1900


Albert Einstein was an iconoclast. So is Freeman Dyson, the brilliant physicist and mathematician who unified quantum theory and electrodynamics into the discipline of quantum electrodynamics in 1949. 
Dyson has been at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Princeton NJ, since 1953, where he shared time and space with Einstein for two years until Einstein's death in 1955. IAS, established in 1930, is a sort of elite scientific think tank staffed at different times by some of the most brilliant scientists of the modern era. Dyson is "infinitely smart", according to Bill Press, former Deputy Director at Los Alamos National Laboratory (birthplace of the atomic and hydrogen bombs). Few people who know or worked with Dyson would disagree - but there are some who don't know a lot about him who think of him as a know-nothing. They are some of the global warming radicals who push Anthropogenic Climate Change (AGW) as a holy war to be waged with every nanogram of their beings, and they don't like Dyson because he thinks the climate change issue has been blown way up out of proportion. He agrees that it's getting warmer, and that carbon dioxide may even have something to do with it, but he doesn't see it as a crisis. To the AGW people, that's heresy, and it makes Freeman Dyson a heretic.  
 
Dyson was interviewed by Nicholas Dawidoff in early 2009 for an article that ran in New York Times Magazine on March 28, 2009, where he had the temerity to voice his opinion on the AGW issue - and likewise, Dawidoff had the temerity run Dyson's opinion in his piece. 
Both took a lot of heat from the climate radicals because of this piece. Here's Dr. Joe Romm, physicist and climate blogger, attacking Dawidoff  to Bob Garfield of On The Media with a blistering fusillade for "misleading the public". "The public is not scientifically expert, and the public’s ability to distinguish science and pseudoscience, which sound pretty much the same, is very small. So it is up to the filters, the media, to use its own judgment based on talking to many different sources and itself weighing the credibility of sources".
There you have it right from an apocalyptic's mouth. We, the public, are stupid (and easy targets for being duped by their propaganda in the media). Only pro-AGW scientists, in their view, have the inside track on the scientific nuances of climate change - other scientists, no matter how accomplished in their field, need not utter a peep. It's the media's job, according to Romm, to be the AGW's mouthpiece, to selectively filter out anything that calls AGW research into even a hint of a question. They are doing an admirable job of doing just that.

Even if a scientist is a practicing climatologist and knows of what he or she speaks, he or she has to know they'll get blackballed by the "mainstream" scientific community if they don't mind their Ps and Qs. These scientists and technocrats can and do arrange for funding to be pulled from apostate scientists who do not agree or agree strongly enough with the AGW dogma. Moreover, the AGW people can and have arranged for the ousting of non-compliant journal editors who have had the bad sense to allow the publishing of papers on climate that aren't sufficiently zealous enough to satisfy them.

Famed AGW apocalyptic Dr. James E. Hansen responded to the New York Times Magazine's piece with this comment: There are bigger fish to fry than Freeman Dyson, who doesn’t know what he’s talking about (Huh?). If he is going to wander into something with major consequences for humanity and other life on the planet, then he should first do his homework — which he obviously has not done on global warming.” Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Hansen needs to do his homework. Dyson worked with Alvin Weinberg at the Institute of Energy Analysis (a subdivision of the Department of Energy (DOE) in the late 1970s studying carbon dioxide's relationship with global climate, and has been pondering the issue for years. Hansen believes himself to be one of the, if not the, foremost expert on climate change in the world, that he drives the car, and everybody else please get in the back seat. But Hansen doesn't give Dyson any credit - just like Einstein's Professors at the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (ETH) in Zürich didn't give him any credit for his contrarian thinking a hundred and ten years ago that ultimately led to Relatively superceding the previously unshakable Newtonian concepts of Absolute Space and Absolute Time. 
Dyson is someone who can roll with the punches the AGW people throw at him. With his customary air of humility, Dyson says: " [m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have". 

Dave Roberts of Grist Magazine has this suggestion: Put AGW "deniers" on trial à la Nuremberg. Roberts equates the AGW "crisis" as being equivalent to the Holocaust, and he equates "deniers" (whom he doesn't distinguish from "doubters" or "skeptics") equivalent to Nazi war criminals. And who is responsible for the "Holocaust" we're experiencing? We humans, of course. This is pretty radical stuff!

Meet Dr. Heidi Cullen, formerly of The Weather Channel, now the interim CEO of Climate Central, who believes meteorologists or other weather professionals should be decertified if they don't toe the line. Here's what she wrote: "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS (American Meteorological Society) shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns."

Wait a minute! I didn't know that AGW was an established scientific fact. I thought it was a hypothesis that is being tested, and, since by definition, climate is defined as the aggregate weather over the course of decades, centuries, and millennia, then at best, the jury's still out on whether man-made climate change is established as a "fundamental" truth. The testing of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, begun in earnest only a couple of decades ago, has in fact barely begun. On the matter of AMS's members agreeing with Cullen's statement about the AMS being on board, well, not so fast!

Here's what TV meteorologist James Spann, a meteorologist at an ABC affiliate in Alabama, had to say about it: "I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can't find them".

Bill Steffen, a meteorologist at the NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids, Michigan, concurs. In an email Steffen said most meteorologists accept that the earth has been warming over the last hundred years, but do not believe the warming is anthropogenic. Those that do believe in AGW do so because they're mandated to do so as per their job description. They're afraid they'll lose it if they stray from the fold. Another example of the financial interests involved in the AGW movement. 



Climate science - a legitimate and highly complex discipline in the physical sciences, has been hijacked by financial, political and ideological interests, which means that the science, as practiced by the ideologues, has lost its claim to objectivity. It has become, in my words, a scientific jihad. Climate science has been hijacked in the same manner as Islam has been hijacked by the terrorist jihadis. It's been bastardized by a fringe element who have been portrayed as mainstream by the mainstream media and sympathetic politicians and, most of all, by themselves.

Dispassionate scientific inquiry is the foundation of scientific research, and likewise, journalism is supposed to be the dispassionate, objective pursuit of the truth. Yet the mainstream media, with the New York Times and the Washington Post leading the charge, is acting as a mouthpiece for only one side of the story. Dozens of columnists and op-ed writers like Tom Friedman and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, Michael Mandelbaum and Bryan Walsh, of Time Magazine, just to name a small handful off the top of my head, tout AGW as established fact. A case in point - when Climategate happened, the media smoothed over the incriminating stuff. Specifics were mentioned very little by most media outlets. The story ran along the lines of " ..... It was just a bump in the road - It was just glitch, no harm done - It didn't change anything - It didn't alter the fact that the overwhelming evidence for man-made climate change is clear - The deniers are making a tempest in a teapot out of this - It was all taken out of context - It was deliberately misconstrued by the enemies of "real" climate science" etc. etc. Andrew Revkin of the NYT, called by some an "alarmist reporter" and a shill for the AGW jihad, was one of the most ambitious reporters running interference on behalf of the East Anglia jihadis. But Revkin was butchered by radical ClimateProgress blogger Joe Romm (remember him from earlier in this post?) in his blog for (responsibly) questioning the validity of a slide in one of Al Gore's lectures that asserted there had been "unprecedented" occurrences of wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters - all due to global warming. Even the IPCC had to admit that even they didn't know enough to say for sure that all these disasters were caused by AGW (though curiously, they didn't explicitly deny it).
According to The Gospel According to Joe, any media that doesn't carry the Word with sufficient zeal must be censured or labeled with some epithet. Romm, as difficult as it is to believe, is probably even more radical than Hansen. He uses his blog to mount attacks on "enemies" of the AGW jihad, and even sometimes wages war against journalists and scientists whom he considers insufficiently passionate AGW jihadis - such as Revkin. Romm has even said Hansen, of all people, is understating the climate crisis in which we are perishing.

As revealed by the Climategate emails from East Anglia and radical bloggers like Romm, along with interviews by AGW scientists given with sympathetic reporters, op-ed columnists for radical "green" publications, Dave Roberts of Grist, and others, there is a significant degree of hatred, rancor, and derision directed at scientists and politicians who have an opposing view. AGW radicals at East Anglia, including notorious schemers Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, collaborated to get Review Editor James Saiers removed from his position at the Geophysical Review Letters because he allowed a "sceptic" (sic) paper (by climate scientist Steve McIntyre) to get published in that journal. They also lobbied for the removal of Hans Von Storch from his position as Editor in Chief at the the journal Climate Research because he allowed a "sceptic" (sic) paper (dubbed "crap science" by Wigley) to be published in his journal.

Climate jihadis who push for punitive measures against those who disagree with their viewpoint aren't limited to just the media and scientific community - here's a real doozy of a fanatic - Lord Nicholas Stern of Brentford, UK. who's hell-bent on waging economic warfare on the United States for having too big of a carbon footprint.  He is the UK's leading "climate economist".
Lord Stern is threatening economic jihad on the U.S. in the event we don't cut our carbon dioxide emissions by 17% within the next ten years. And if we don't (which we won't - because we can't), he's going to get a bunch of other countries, which presumably includes the U.K., to boycott all products made here in the US. Stern is claiming that "if nothing is done", the global temperature will rise as much as 7° C by the year 2100. 

What?!
This guy doesn't know science from shinola. Apparently his cronies over in nearby East Anglia are feeding him this stuff and he must think it tastes good. He thinks the AGW science is settled, which it's not. But it doesn't matter to him, because he's on the war path and his mind is made up.
The illuminating thing about Lord Stern is that he is an economist, and as such he knows for certain that the United States would cease to be a viable society if such drastic measures to cut CO2 emissions were enacted and enforced. But that would be alright with him. He apparently wants to see the U.S brought to it's knees, one way or another.  This is a classic, lose-lose scenario that would have implications for not just the U.S., but globally. Maybe Stern figures China would step in and become the world's primary economic engine (they're already well along in that direction as of now). 
Curiously, Stern wants to let China off the hook, even though China emits more CO2 than the United States. Stern used the "per capita" gambit to excuse China's carbon footprint. China's population  outnumbers that of the United States more than 4 to 1, which would render any per capita comparison between the two countries utterly meaningless. These are just a few of the schemings and machinations Wigley, Jones, and others have orchestrated or tried to orchestrate. The emails and other spoken and printed material from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia are filled with ad hominum attacks on scientists outside their circle (and thus, outside their control) who carry out climate research the AGW jihadis consider heretical or not sufficiently supportive of their agenda. 

The nature of science is often adversarial - that's its nature. Subjects of scientific study are often rife with mind boggling complexity - almost never is there any one right answer, and usually there are many, many "somewhat right" answers that are unequivocally right to true believers. Sometimes even competent scientists get it wrong, and when an honorable scientist gets it wrong they accept  the correction graciously, publish an erratum, and move on. One of young Einstein's Professors at the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (ETH) who was critical of him  was his mathematics instructor, Professor Hermann Minkowski (who refered to Einstein as "a lazy dog").
Einstein was vindicated when, in 1908, Professor Minkowski united the three spacial dimensions with the dimension of time into a unified four dimensional "spacetime" using Einstein's Invariance Theory (better known as the Special Theory of Relativity) as its foundation.

Scientists who disagree should, but often do not, respect the differing scientific opinions of other scientists. In researching this serial story of climate change - I have seen many interviews and read many articles. I have discussed (via email) many aspects of both sides. What I've come to understand is simply this: AGW jihadis display a singularly rigid and unnatural animosity towards those credentialed scientists (and journalists) holding opposing scientific views, while opposing scientists are less rancorous on a personal level but dismiss the AGW jihadis as practitioners of quack science who are driven by greed, by the quest for fame, money, and hero status. As for the AGW jihadis, their jobs and prestige depends on their being right. It's the politicization of science for personal and political gain that has turned off many scientists. Many climate scientists respond to their critics by questioning their integrity rather than responding with reasoned arguments backed up by solid data. IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri trashes research not done by AGW jihadis as "voodoo science" even after it has been shown that some of IPCC's most quoted data came right out of unvetted activist brochures, reports from corporations with a vested interest in the AGW jihad, and newspaper articles by activist AGW journalists. UN Environment chief Achem Steiner suggests anyone who questions questionable claims and data produced by AGW jihadi scientists are guilty of conducting "witch hunts". AGW jihadis flail wildly at those who have legitimate disagreements with their conclusions, and along with their media shills, they release chaff and run interference to cover up legitimate questions on whether or not they are practicing quack science to maintain their position in the driver's seat where they can continiue to ride the gravy train only as long as they fight with all the abandon they can muster.

With AGW, we are told by the media that the "overwhelming majority" of "climate experts" and "leading scientists" support man-made global warming and believe it is a crisis of epic proportions. These are "the authorities" that Einstein would consider them to be today if he were here. If he were here, you can almost bet money he would say: "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of Truth".